I'm using GHOST 2003. I run XP Home. I have been making images on my 2nd hardrive since I got the machine last Dec., so I have a series of them. I have invariably run integrity check on every one of them.

Couple of days ago, I had a minor problem which was annoying me and rather than seach it out for fixing, I decided to just restore an image from a time when I knew the annoyance was not there. Too bad.

My restore failed. It stopped and asked me to insert the next media or browse for it. I browsed and selected what I thought it wanted, but no joy. It was not pleased with anything I could offer. So I had to cancel. Which left me, of course, with a partially overwritten disk, which would not boot.

I tried another image, from earlier in time, with the same results. Then I went to the last image in the series and restored succesfully (this was not really the image I wanted, but under the cirsumstances, I was happy).

So. All images were made with same procedure. All passed integrity check. Some failed ( I didn't try absolutely every one all the way back), at least one works. I never defraged the disk holding the images. What could have happened?The only thing I've done that correlates is that I have poked around in some of the images with GHOST Explorer. Is it conceivable that GHOST Explorer corrupted the files?

Hmmm. I didn't simply hit the enter key. I'm dubious about it though. For the image that was successfully restored, there was no stopping to request a new media.

The images are over 2 GB. About 15 GB before compression. Fits nicely on 2 DVDs (after the problem described, I made a fresh image on DVD -- lost a bit of confidence in writing and storing them to the second harddrive).

I'm led to believe the image became corrupted somehow, but I don't know how. Some stupid mistake? Can GHOST Explorer do anything? If I extract using GHOST Explorer, can that corrupt the image?

It's worth a try. Long as you know you can load the early image, you have nothing to loose. (famous last words)

What do you have on that partition that's making your images so large? The bigger the image, the greater the chance for corruption. You should have nothing but the o/s & programs on your boot/system partition. This will make your images smaller.

Some time ago (pre NG2003) I asked Symantec Support if defragmentation could cause harm to a Ghost Image. The answer was NO and the logic behind that answer was that if the Image is burned to CDs, using third party software, then the file is altered too.

I had three Images on a partition which is the same size as the system partition, which means that space is limited. After the third Image was created I burned #1 and #2 to CDs. Next, I defragged (SpeedDisk) the partition.

After that, five integrity tests were successful. Of #1, #2 and #3 on the harddrive after defragmentation. Of #1 and #2 on CDs.

A few days ago, I decided to re-image the system partition. Regarding the limited space on the target partition, I decided to delete #1 and #2 which had been burnt to CDs and only have two Images on the harddisk, always replacing the oldest one when re-imaging.

(I found out that, in order to recover the space on the target partition, I had to purge the Recycle Bin / Norton Protection.)

Prior to re-imaging, I defragged the target partition to consolidate free space.

After "cleaning" and defragging the system partition I re-imaged (#4).

When done, I did two integrity tests. #4 was successful but #3 failed.

It failed on a Adobe help document in pdf-format.

When time permits I´ll fool around with Image #3 and replace offending files with the "same" file extracted from Image #4.

If anyone is interested, I´ll post my findings.

Christer

Old chinese proverb:If I hear - I forget, If I see - I remember, If I do - I understand

Since I started using GHOST, I have made about 10 images on my second hard drive. Each one, when made, was verified and each passed the test. Today I have gone back and rechecked the older images. None passed, except the very first one. The very first one was marginal as to whether or not it needed to span. When I ran the verify, I saw, for a second or so, at the end the Drive001 come up, as though it were reading just a very short segment in the next span.

Also, day before yesterday I restored an image made on 8/29/03. It was the last image, at that time, in the series. After that restore, on 9/2/03 I made another image.

So, it appears that each new image somehow corrupts the previously made image. But why not the very first one? Could be because of it's size, or perhaps the name?

I have been naming the images consistently, example: C Drive 08-29-03. If I explore and look at file names, that is the way it is shown, only with the .gho extension added. ( GHOST did not object, of course, to the file name format or I could not have made it in the first place.)

But the very first image was named GatewayTooOEM.gho. So it had a different name format as well as perhaps being right on t he cusp of the 2 GB limit.

Since I believe in the tooth fairy, I renamed the 8/29/03 file to be short and letters only, but that gambit didn't work. It still fails verify.

Is it possible that I have been shooting myself in the foot with the naming? And that each new image somehow confuses itself with prior images?

The naming convention I was using had the names be identical for the first 8 spaces of the file name, e. g. "Drive C 09-23-03". When Ghost renamed it into a dos format they all became DriveOO1.ghs, Drive002.ghs, etc., since the original file names were truncated to 5 characters. So, when I would make a new image with the first part of the filename being identical to the previous image, Ghost was apparently repeating previously used span names and overwriting previously written spans.

I have now made one new image without losing the previous image, so I belive I have found the cure. I suppose this fits into the category of "things I should have known".

I hope this thread helps someone have less trouble with Ghost. Done right, it is a godsend.

BTW. Radministrator asked what I have to make my partition so large. Actually, my disk is one partition. I have a copy of Partition Magic and someday may use it. But, to answer the question, I have about 7 GB of games on my disk. Myst III alone takes bout 2 GB. Additionally I have The Sims Online, Diablo II and There.

To make an image takes me about 13 minutes. Takes about 5 minutes to verify. If I partition my disk, I will have a quicker operation and probably more reliable. But it is currenlty fast enough not to bother me, and now that I have the naming convention sorted out, I expect to have acceptable reliability. But, come some dull rainy day, I probably will partition my disk and isolate the OS from my programs and games.

Gosh. I feel like I have "arrived". I'm proud that you found my finding worthy of noting in your guide (of which I have a well thumbed copy). Tis good, I think, cause someone else either has made or will make the same mistake, and the information in the guide will either help prevent it or help correct it.

I was pissed off, I just had a server die and in order to get data off the raid 5 array in one piece i ghosted the disk, with the command ghost -FRO (skip bad sectors) as there were some on the disk, hence it crashed. now i have a new server and and installation of windows server 2000 and i go to restore from my ghost images and they are corrupt. *bugger* what i did to fix it was to take the hard disk out of my server (the one with the images on) and plug it into another pc and ghost from image to disk (a spare IDE disk that i had lying around) and then i can plug my spare disk in and copy my data back hopefully it is ghosting at the moment as i am posting this